9 ms·
Open Source is simply a modern 'try before you buy' for a majority of products. You cant sell me a sofa without letting me sit in it, you can't sell me a TV wit
by electromagnetic 17y ago
Open Source is simply a modern 'try before you buy' for a majority of products. You cant sell me a sofa without letting me sit in it, you can't sell me a TV without me seeing it running. The assumption that people will buy before they try is almost exclusive to food products, which manage the majority of new customers by referral (or through marketing sugar-laced anything's to children).
Assuming people will buy a software product before they try it is absurd, even Microsoft gives 60-day trials of Office with all new computers. Open Source is no different than traditional ways to sell products. Open Source is simply a more genuine form of shareware, trial-ware and nag-ware.
- Sanguinez 17y agoThat's a very limited way of looking at free software. Free software gives you some very important freedom you wouldn't have otherwise. It also improves software quality ("given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.") and development.
- elviejo 17y agoThere is nothing in open source that makes it a "try before you buy". In theory a company can sell a product, this product being open source. So with it I should also get the freedom to use it, share it, or modify it. Plus there is the open source development model that gives other benefits.
- artagnon 17y agoI completely disagree. Do you really think the most successful open-source products like the Linux kernel, Apache, and Firefox are "Try before you buy"? As far as these three examples are concerned, there is nothing to buy after "trying" it.